Monthly Shoot

[hotfxr]

Went up to the gun club where we have our monthly "Frontloaders" shoot today. It is always a competition and most of the guys go gaga over the firearms I bring (Cause they are so pretty, of course), however, I totally suck at standing and firing at paper and metal targets. Not to bring up any excuses, but considerable nerve damage from a bad car accident a dozen or so years ago have left me incapable of standing still and holding a rifle steady. I can dominate in IDPA while moving and shooting at several different targets while being timed (at least in my own mind I can dominate, don't go shattering my illusions folks!) but I do get tired of coming in dead last in these little mini competitions. Since the only area that I know of that cannon shooting is sanctioned is only about 12 miles east of the gun club and I was already driving 75 or so miles anyway, I loaded up the cannon last night and planned on 1, wowing the group with my cannon artistry and 2, heading over to the cannon allowed range after the shoot. Well let's see, I showed up late, as usual, forgot my tool box and realized I had no nipple on one rifle, found out I had flash powder in my flinter priming tool that struggled to make enough oomph to light off the powder giving me 2 or 3 hangfires at every shot, had a loose front sight on the rifle that I could shoot so I wound up consistently to the right of all the targets, and had one of the shooters accidentally fire into the ground at my feet and that gave me a cut on my pinkie that just stings. After the group was underwhelmed with my cannon making prowess I had enough of the good times there and decided to head over to the cannon range. Now the fact that there was a lot of smoke in the air should have given me a clue, but then again I have never been all that clear on the concept for most areas of my life. I had to leave so early this morning that I didn't have time to look at the news or I would have found out that the latest Lake County fire which started yesterday about 1:30 in the afternoon had already burned more than 40,000 acres by the time I left the club, started right in the area that I was going to boom the cannon at. This one is a bad one and has wiped out most of a couple of small towns and caused the evacuation of over 10,000 people as of a couple of hours ago. And this time I have several friends that have lost their homes to the fire and it has not even begun to be contained. All in all not the best of days at the old range. But outside of the fire problems (we have some folks gong to be staying with us for a bit) I would still rather be on the range embarrassing myself than most anything else that is going on.

[Patocazador]

That's a very eventful day ... one you might wish to forget. 

I hope those fires get under control quickly.